After 10 months of experience, I conclude that JHH wins the ""Top Hospital of the Nation"" award like Putin the Russian elections.
I am a physician myself and went to JHH because I expected good care (amongst other reasons).
Many surprising things happened throughout my (cancer) surgeries that are (mostly) not attributable to system errors but to human ignorance/arrogance. After the first cancer surgery had been scheduled - it took 5 weeks to do this since 2 attending surgeons from different Divisions were involved - I was told by NP's from surgery, anesthesiology and doctors from Hematology that my cancer surgery would have to be postponed for 5-6 months (sic!) because the Hematology Division was not able to schedule an earlier pre-op hematology consult (usually takes 15-30 minutes). Being familiar with the health care system I did get it what I wanted for the price of two sleepless nights, more anxiety and a lot of energy. On the day of surgery, the surgeons did not remember important details of the surgery that we had agreed upon. I was about to jump up from the stretcher but remembered that my leave had been scheduled, my own clinics canceled etc.....I felt lucky of having the medical background to push through what we had agreed upon.....In the post-op period, I struggled with answers of ""This is not my responsibility"".....After the second surgery when I was in bad pain and hoped to see my surgeon, I was told he is away for 10 days when he was away only for the weekend.....Lately I asked him a simple question by email and phone call to his office and waited for > 3 weeks to get an answer.... Did I mention that your and the attending physician's name will be displayed on the door to your hospital room...HIPPA forbids this in most other places....
In summary, this place is not better than most other places, and people do not hide that patient care is not the priority....I am sure, I get packaged into some nice research studies....I still think that my experience was not the worst given that people knew I am a colleague who knows how to work the system...good luck to everybody!
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